Gateway to hell

The Karakum desert in Central Turkmenistan is one of extremes… Temperatures over the year vary from -30 C in the winter with snowfall to 60 C in summer. At least in late April it appears generally greener than the Arabian deserts… Another special part is the millennia of human modifications… As Ashgabat to the South and Konye Urgench in the North were important cultural centers in the past and form part of ancient trade routes as the silk road the adjacent deserts were irrigated by complex channel systems and used agriculturally to varying degrees. About 50 odd kilometers North of Ashgabat in the middle of the sand desert one stumbles, thus, pretty out of the blue over a big channel….

About half way across the desert one finds a few more man made attractions… Rich gas deposits are found under the desert and in the early days (when HSE was an unknown concept) the apparent hit and miss approach led to some amazing well blow-outs creating huge craters. Some are filled with water and some show bubbling and burning gas. The most fascinating one is the famous Derweza crater: “Gateway to hell”, a well blow-out from the fifties where they hit shallow gas and after the blow out intended to let it burn off quickly… Well its still burning 50 odd years later and it is an amazing sight especially at night when the intense red to infrared radiation illuminates all surroundings…

During the day in bright sunlight its actually hard to see and find so I was roaming around in the desert doing some nice sand driving…

A cool wind after the rains kept temperatures pleasant so I stayed 2 days, and explored the desert on foot on a 10km run (somehow need to keep fit..)

Although Turkmenistan is actually quite a wealthy country, the road towards the North was significantly deteriorating, one pot hole chasing the next so for many kilometers I was driving on an adjacent track.

Approaching the floodplains of the Amu Darya river in the North, complex irrigation channels started criss-crossing everywhere and with increasing agricultural activity, the road to Konye Urgench was getting worse and worse. Probably IT has not seen any upgrade since Soviet times … My average speed over the last 100km was about 25km/h…..

The few Turkmens I met and spoke with were actually really friendly and nothing of this totalitarian background was transcending the conversation… well, which obviously was limited due to the language barrier… They know Germania and some of the older ones (same as in Uzbekistan) know all sorts of East German cities as they have served in the Soviet Army in Germany… Overall, even in the agriculturally dominated poor areas people seem to be doing ok, as houses have decent sizes and are reasonably new.

The border x-ing went pretty uneventful, even on the Uzbek side of which I heard some pretty bad stories… Some other travellers passed 2 days on the border to even get in from Kazakhstan… here just a few curious looks and some paperwork and that was it again… Hope the exit will be similar.